


XXI. The World

by PostcardsfromTheoryland



Series: April Tarot Card Prompts [30]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Everybody Lives, Families of Choice, M/M, Peace, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23945773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PostcardsfromTheoryland/pseuds/PostcardsfromTheoryland
Summary: The World: Accomplishment, completion, sense of belongingOne year later.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: April Tarot Card Prompts [30]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686346
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46





	XXI. The World

**Author's Note:**

> I...may have cheated and dug through the deck to pull this particular card for the last day.
> 
> This is technically a continuation of the Nine of Cups but can be read as a standalone

Keith wakes up to Lance bringing him waffles in bed. The fact that Lance even managed to extract himself from bed without Keith noticing is a testament to how exhausted he was. But now he has waffles, drizzled in that hazelnut-like syrup from Souria, and a little bowl of fruit and a mug of fresh coffee.

“Looks like I got all that crap out of your hair last night,” Lance says, his hands back on Keith’s scalp, and Keih can’t resist humming a little. He gets a raised eyebrow and a smirk for that and he tries to kick Lance, but the bed is large enough that he can’t reach, and he’s too lazy to move and risk spilling breakfast.

“What do you want to do today?” he asks instead. Keith has images of a lazy day inside: snuggling on the couch to watch a movie, sitting in the loft with a book, maybe a massage if he can convince Lance, but Lance apparently has other plans.

“Can we wander the city? It looks like a lot has changed since the last time I was on Diabazaal.”

Keith can’t deny Lance anything, so a day on the town it is.

They stop by the new bookstore first, where Lance buys a couple “How to learn Galran” books, then Keith leads him into the glassblower’s workshop he found the last time he meandered the city. It’s a fascinating process, and the end result is incredibly strong. Keith catches Lance cooing over one of the shiny blue pendants and immediately purchases it, and when Lance gapes at him and squawks about the cost, Keith reminds him of the size of the house he just spent the night in.

Lunch consists of the flatbread things similar to pizza, eaten in the park dedicated to Voltron, and if a few people recognize that they are the people two of the statues in the center of the garden are based off of, they’re still mercifully given some space and privacy. Keith appreciates that about Daiabazaal.

Lance insists on spending most of the afternoon in the giant art museum in the center of town. Keith has never actually gone in, mostly due to memories of shitty field trips to art museums growing up where they’d been forced to be too quiet and stare up at some of the most boring things he’d ever seen. So it’s a surprise to see all the different kinds of Galra art, and an even larger surprise to see an entire wing dedicated to them and Voltron. Some of it is beautiful, and Keith makes notes of the artists' names to see if he can find them for commissions later. Some of it is...odd, and an interesting perspective.

“Why am I so...long?” Lance asks, looking at one where he’s been stretched out to the approximate proportions of Bii-Boh-Bi.

“The same reason I’m the size of an Aurusian and also on fire, apparently,” Keith says.

Still, it’s flattering nonetheless and they try not to be _too_ critical of some of the different interpretations. They linger in the galleries until a guard timidly informs them the museum will be closing soon.

Keith suggests they pick up something from the market to take home for dinner but Lance, a gleam in his eye, claims that dinner is already covered. As they approach the house, Keith can see light pouring out of the windows, and hesitates.

“Lance?”

“No worries, Fearless Leader,” Lance says. “I invited some people over.”

The door is already opening at that, and Keith is surprised to find Shiro and Adam immediately pulling him in for a hug.

“I thought you weren’t going to be here for a few more days!” Keith cries, and Adam just laughs at him for some reason. They lead him into the house and Keith is startled to find _a lot_ more people than he was expecting.

Allura, Coran, Matt, and Pidge are standing around his living room; Hunk, Romelle, and Shay are all in the kitchen, and Hunk, tears in his eyes, yells out that “Your kitchen, Keith, it speaks to me!”

“What’s…?” He hasn’t seen everyone in one place since the end of the war. They all kept in pretty regular contact, and he’d seen everyone individually at some point in the not-so-distant past, but this is clearly a planned gathering.

“I figured out that you didn’t know what today is and thought we could do a surprise party. Still can’t believe you forgot, though,” Lance shakes his head sadly, and Keith panickedly goes through every important date he can remember.

“Uhhh, is it my birthday? _Your_ birthday? Christmas?”

“In Earth years, it’s the anniversary of when we ended the war,” Allura explains with a smile.

And yeah, Keith had definitely forgotten about that, but could you blame him? It was hard to count in Earth years when you didn’t live on Earth.

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Lance nudges him, “so we got the gang all back together and brought them to you. Well, the gang and some extras,” he nods over to Adam, Matt, and Shay.

“It would have been nice if Krolia were here,” Shiro says, “but she took that mission so you would be free to celebrate with us.” Keith had wondered why Krolia had suddenly demanded they switch mission schedules, but chalked it up to her being worried about him hopping right from one mission to the next without a break. And this also explains why Lance was so insistent to get him out of the house.

“Dinner!” Romelle announces, putting one last dish on the table. Coran breaks out some kind of extremely fancy Altean alcohol he had apparently saved from the Castle before it was destroyed and had just been carrying around ever since, and the giant dining room table Keith had laughed at Krolia for purchasing for him is actually full of people, a few extra chairs scrounged up to make room for everyone. He doesn’t quite have enough dishes for everyone at one time, but no one minds having to drink Altean champagne out of a mug instead of a flute or putting their food into a giant bowl instead of a plate. There’s warm conversation all around him: Adam asking about his favorite place in Daibazaal, Allura and Coran sharing updates about the nearly completed replacement of the Castle, Pidge and Matt explaining how their dad managed to adapt teleduv technology so people other than Alteans can create wormholes, Shiro describing the most recent planet _The Atlas_ had stopped at, Shay recounting how she and Hunk had made a combined human-Balmeran soup for the Chisette diplomats.

A year. An entire year of relative peace, of a mostly stable Galra society and the return of the Alteans boosting technological advances for everyone. A year where he was (mostly) not worried about everyone’s safety, though he knew it would take all of them a lot longer to recover from the hypervigilance of the war.

There were times - many times - throughout the war that Keith thought some or all of them wouldn’t live to see the end of it. Times when they had escaped death by the skin of their teeth or because of a fluke accident.

But they’d done it. Against all the odds, they’d survived to see the other side. It was over.

They’d won.

**Author's Note:**

> HOLY.
> 
> I cannot believe I actually made it to the end of this challenge. But 56k later, here we are. **Thank you** to everyone who kudosed and commented!
> 
> I'm going to mark this series as "completed" for now, though I may come back to it. In the meantime, there are several longer WIPs in various stages of completion, so stay tuned and come yell at me on [tumblr](http://postcardsfromtheoryland.tumblr.com/) if you want!


End file.
